When I first saw the cover to Halo I was immediately drawn to it, what a beautiful cover! My instant thoughts were beautiful cover, beautiful story too right? This wasn’t entirely true. I had several issues with this book, hopefully my review won’t come across as a rant but explain the reasons behind me giving Halo only 1 star. For what its worth Halo did start off pretty well, it told the story of three angels sent on a mission to “perform good deeds, acts of charity and kindness, to lead by example” basically to prevent the world being brought to destruction from the agents of darkness. It was interesting watching how the three angels; Bethany, Gabriel and Ivy would adapt to earth and cope with their human forms, especially for Bethany, as it was her first time on earth. Interesting enough but then in typical fashion Halo took the path a lot of angel books seem to follow; angel (Beth) falls in love with a human (Xavier) and this in Beth’s world is hugely frowned upon. By the time Gabriel and Ivy discovered Bethany’s secret not much had been happening in the story, the pace was really slow. So I thought FINALLY it’s about to kick off, something big will happen which will keep me from falling asleep or being bored to death! But sadly no “higher powers” had given permission for the relationship to go ahead Seriously?? So the story continued at its painfully slow pace, Xavier and Bethany's relationship began to get even more frustrating; with Bethany continually acting like a clueless damsel in distress; “she had the face of an angelWhat could Jake mean by thatCould he have possibly guessed my secret?”And this is the funniest quote yet when Xavier has just been playing rugby;"I looked in anguish at a long scratchAcross his forearmHow did this happen?”Are you kidding me? And Xavier continually protecting Bethany as if his life depended on it.And then came Jake Thorn; angels are supposed to be intelligent right? (I especially thought Gabriel was) but no one batted an eye about Jake taking Beth to the prom? I thought his name would be obvious enough (if you haven’t read Halo yet, Beth’s surname is Church, and so Jake’s surname should have given some sort of indication) What really got to me was how Beth agreed to go to prom with Jake, she had extremely been looking forward to going to prom with her boyfriend Xavier who she deeply loved, but because of his unfortunate accident he couldn’t go, so she goes with Jake; a guy who she’s not really sure about and who her boyfriend dislikes? seriously??Another issue that bugged me was that Bethany was strictly told by her older siblings not to draw attention to herself, as they didn’t want anyone to discover their big secret! But none of them were subtle at all, they were described at times as having an otherworldliness about them, Beth speaks French so fluently in just her first lesson, Gabriel has an unusual way of speaking and the way he manhandles men twice his size so easily. You would think that someone would be clued up enough to realise that there was something different about them?Overall I found Halo to be an overly clichéd book with an extremely slow and drawn out story, consequently a book I didn’t really enjoy. Despite my 1 star review, I’m sure that there are other readers out there who will enjoy and appreciate this book more than me.
